Remove the Drop Shadow from Mac Window Screenshots

When you screenshot a single window on Mac — Shift+Cmd+4, then Space, then click the window — macOS wraps the result in a big soft drop shadow. It looks polished in isolation but adds a wide band of transparent padding you often don't want. You can drop the shadow for one capture by holding Option, or switch it off entirely so every window shot comes out with clean, tight edges.

Where the shadow comes from

This shadow only appears in window capture mode — the one you reach by pressing Shift+Cmd+4 and then tapping Space so the cursor becomes a camera. Region captures (Shift+Cmd+4 and drag) and full-screen captures (Shift+Cmd+3) never add it. macOS renders the window on a transparent background and paints a realistic shadow around it, which is why the saved PNG is noticeably larger than the window itself — the extra space is the shadow.

Drop it for a single capture

If you only need one shadow-free shot, there's no need to change any setting:

1. Press Shift+Cmd+4.
2. Tap Space to switch to window mode — the pointer becomes a camera.
3. Hold Option and click the window you want.

Holding Option at the moment of the click removes the shadow for that capture only; let go and the next window shot has its shadow back. It's the right tool when you want the shadow most of the time and a clean edge just occasionally.

Turn the shadow off for every capture

If you almost always want clean edges, make it the default with one defaults command:

# Remove the shadow from all window screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

The killall SystemUIServer line restarts the screenshot service so the change applies right away — no logout needed. Now every window capture is cropped tight to the window. To bring the shadow back:

# Restore the drop shadow
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

This works identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. With the shadow disabled system-wide, the Option trick simply does nothing extra — the shot is already clean.

Capturing the window in the first place

The shadow only matters once you're in window mode, which has a few handy variations of its own. See how to screenshot a single window on Mac for the full set of window-capture shortcuts, including grabbing a menu or the Dock.